Anna Nicole Smith: Larger than life

August 02, 2002|By Steve Johnson, Tribune television critic.

The fact that there is no preview tape for "The Anna Nicole Show," the voluminous Ms. Smith's attempt to do for the E! Entertainment channel what "The Osbournes" has done for MTV, should in no way be interpreted as an ominous sign.

Kind of in the same way that a TV outfit making an exclamation point part of its name should not be viewed as an attempt to create a false sense of excitement.

E!'s official story is that Sunday's premiere 30-minute episode (9 p.m.), of the newest days-in-the-life reality show and first, really, to knock off "The Osbournes" since its runaway success, was still being edited.

Well, so was this article until entirely too close to deadline but that doesn't mean I couldn't have sent out a rough version a few days earlier if I were confident in it and reams of national publicity awaited.

E! presented the borderline narcoleptic stripper-turned Playmate-turned billionaire's bride-turned will contestant at a desultory session before TV critics way back in early July, and it had clips aplenty to show back then.

Anna Nicole going bowling. Anna Nicole around the house with her purported straight-A-student 16-year-old son, who said, "I love my mom, but I hate the cameras." Anna Nicole saying she hasn't had sex in two years. Everything short of Anna Nicole throwing her bra at Ozzy during a concert in some ugly attempt to force a crossover episode.

But E! didn't, the channel's development vice president acknowledged, have a clear game plan for the show along the lines of MTV patterning "Osbournes" after 1950s family sitcoms.

The executive, Jeff Shore, described the process as "just sort of getting tape in and then going to the editing bay, and we're sort of trying to put pieces together."

He did reveal, however, that they are looking at having "a clear beginning, middle and end.

And it might be that we're looking at bookending it with a prologue and an epilogue."

The funny thing is, despite this high-level fuzziness, even despite Smith's empty-shell performance in front of TV critics, you have a feeling there might be a disarmingly engaging show nonetheless in following around a zaftig celebrity-for-no-particular-reason as she mangles words like "cabana" and coos at paparazzi.

A window to our times?

Done right, as the bubbly, joyfully shallow ridealong E! is promoting, it could be a window into our peculiar times.

Done wrong, as out-and-out mockery of Smith, it could further the sickly sad feeling you got watching her try to field questions, the sense of a woman who couldn't quite handle the spotlight but who might collapse completely if it were off her.

At the press session, attendees debated whether her vacant-bombshell act was all truth or partly learned response, a defensive posture taken whenever the going got tougher than she'd like.

A lot of the former and a little of the latter, most likely, as the 34-year-old L.A.-area resident claimed not to understand many of the questions presented her.

But we did learn that she wants "to go on with the future and have a good time," realizes that the E! people "probably are" making fun of her in the show, and that she has a fan base as wide as the population.

"I have large women that love me," she said. "I have children. I also have college boys. I also have older people. So I mean, I have the whole market, it seems."

And the root of that appeal, she seemed to honestly believe, is that "I speak my mind and tell the truth. I tell it like it is."

At one point she said she hoped the show would help people "start to take me seriously as an actress," but at another, asked what she considers her greatest talent, she said, "I have no idea."

Smith would not talk about her late husband, octogenarian Texas oilman J. Howard Marshall, or the $89 million judgment she finally won from his estate in March, a ruling that is being appealed by Marshall's son, who calls Smith "Miss Cleavage."

She also would not discuss her cleavage or how it was obtained, saying, "I didn't come here to talk about my transplants."

Back in the mainstream

She did say that she considered the show her reintroduction to the world after being "stuck up -- stuck -- in my house so long from the litigation."

As if she were on electronic monitoring.

Smith spent the session patting the head of one of the show's "stars," her dog Sugar Pie, a miniature something or other said to be in therapy and on doggie Prozac because of an excessive fondness for its human.

She was joined by E! execs and the show's other two main characters, her lawyer, Howard K. Stern, whose head she did not pat, and her assistant, Kim Walther, who apparently gets an Anna Nicole tattoo during the course of the taping, which began in late spring and will likely continue at least through September.

A ratings grabber

The E! people said they became convinced Smith could be the next great celebrity reality participant after the channel's not particularly flattering "True Hollywood Story" profile of her earned great ratings whenever it ran.

That Smith is working with E! again, despite her evident dislike of that show and despite having $90 million all but in the bank, tells you something about her need to be before the public in whatever capacity.

And from her choice of projects we can surmise that somewhere in that cunning, if not exactly theory-packed, platinum head of hers, she may have realized her greatest talent is in being Anna Nicole Smith, semi-notorious former centerfold.